What’s at the Foundation of Your Addiction?

Overcoming compulsive behavior, such as sex or porn addictionrequires you to look back into your past as much as it requires you to envision your future. When you’re getting to the bottom of addictive behavior patterns, you have to start all the way back at what we call the foundation.

Imagine that you’re planning to build a house. If that house is going to stand up — not only on mild days, but also through the worst storms — it needs a strong foundation. It needs to be rooted and secure in its place, so that as things change around it, it remains upright. This rule also applies to people. Those whose lives are built upon unsecured foundations are much more likely to encounter trouble, especially as the forces of the world act upon them.

In terms of a person’s life, the foundation refers to everything they were taught at a young age. If negative behaviors, emotional outbursts, or poor choices were modeled to a child by his parents or guardians, then the child is more likely to reflect these behaviors back, all through their lives. Because he doesn’t have a foundation in place, which taught him to deal with stress or strong emotions constructively, he is left standing on shaky ground, and grasping at anything that seems to work.

We always tell our clients to look back at their lives, so they can see their own foundations. Was anyone there to teach them valuable life skills? Did your parents model respect and intimacy towards one another? What about friendship? Growing up without a reference point for these seemingly basic concepts is a recipe for compulsive behavior later in life.

You wouldn’t expect a person with a limited understanding of car engines to make a great mechanic. Professions require strong foundations upon which to build new and stronger skills. And make no mistake — respect, intimacy and friendship are skills. They need to be learned as part of a healthy foundation for your life.

Sometimes, men get the mistaken impression that a rocky foundation must be the product of some kind of abuse. This might lead him to think, “Well, I was never hurt as a child, so I must be fine.” This is not necessarily true. Emotional damage is sometimes more subtle, but can still have a big impact on one’s behavior later in life.

Ultimately, a poor foundation leads men to feeling poorly about themselves. This can manifest as a reluctance to approach women, either for fear of rejection, or due to negative feelings associated with women in general. For men in these situations, it might feel safer to stick to porn, or escorts, or any other type of sexual activity that doesn’t rely on intimacy.

This is the kind of behavior we address at Neulia, by Compulsion Solutions. Compulsive behavior is caused when you continually respond to stress or negativity by using the same flawed coping mechanisms you learned when you were young. By finding the flaws in your foundation, you can begin to see them with adult eyes, and work towards more constructive behaviors.